Scottsdale bombing trial: Defense lays out its case

by Ofelia Madrid - Feb. 15, 2012 10:03 PMThe Republic | azcentral.com

Most package bombs are sent to someone the attacker knows, a former bomb investigator testified Tuesday in the federal trial of two White-supremacist brothers accused in the 2004 bombing of Scottsdale's diversity director.

The trial of twin brothers Dennis and Daniel Mahon, 61, entered its fifth week with testimony from retired U.S. Postal Inspector Michael Casadei, who worked bomb investigations in the western U.S. for more than 20 years and was on scene Feb. 26, 2004, when a pipe bomb exploded in Don Logan's hands. Two other city employees were also injured. Prosecutors say Logan was targeted because he is Black.

Casadei told jurors that his first week on the Logan investigation, he spent lots of time with the diversity director, focused on whether a personal relationship with someone had prompted the bomb.

"In a mail bomb, there's a personal relationship involved," Casadei said. Usually that means a love triangle or a bad business deal. He estimated that about 90 percent of the mail bombs he investigated in about two decades came from personal contact.

Defense attorneys for the Mahons have contended that the pipe bomb was not the work of the brothers but an inside job of a city employee.

Casadei said he looked at employees who might be upset with Logan's role in city disciplinary hearings.

Although the Mahons' name was mentioned early in the investigation, Casadei said he had a different theory.

"I wanted to eliminate as a possibility that anyone within the city was involved," he said. "Based on my experience, I wanted to eliminate any obvious personal conflict. Mail bombs are different than placed devices. The mentality of a mail bomb is different."

Investigators determined that the package bomb was left at Scottsdale's Civic Center Library on a weekend when an authors event was being hosted at the library. The box was addressed to Logan but had an incorrect address to Scottsdale City Hall, so according to court documents, it was picked up from the library and delivered to the city's internal mailroom. A few days later, the box found its way to Logan's office.

"How you could logically assume it would get to Don?" Casadei asked. "The physical address didn't make sense."

Casadei said he only worked on the Logan investigation for a short period because he was transitioning to retirement and was asked to focus his work on a Joint Terrorism Task Force.